Apocalypse Never - Michael Shellenberger

Apocalypse Never

By Michael Shellenberger

  • Release Date: 2020-06-30
  • Genre: Science & Nature
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 168 Ratings

Description

Now a National Bestseller! 

Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem.

Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions.

But in 2019, as some claimed “billions of people are going to die,” contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.

Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas.

Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions.

What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

Reviews

  • Excellent, fact based

    5
    By PierresFamily
    If you want to read a climate book by an internationally acclaimed environmental expert (worked for Obama & awarde Time’s Environmentalist of the year” in 2008), who separates out science from politicized claims, this is the book for you. I have raad about environmental issues for over 30 years, and this is the most informative book that I have ever read.
  • An Environmental Gamechanger

    5
    By AutoDidact1
    If you haven’t read this book, wherever you are on the issue, you don’t really know much about the issue.
  • A great book

    5
    By whjjkw
    Very interesting and insightful with lots of facts with sources.
  • Young eco activists need to read

    5
    By Paola Pomegranates
    It’s jarringly different narrative to that which I learned in college readings. This book is optimistic and compassionately grounded in thorough investigation. I’m joyful to have learned the truth to a situation that seemed near hopeless and resentful before.
  • A good counterpoint to current dogma

    5
    By theRealMophilly
    It is difficult to argue in defiance of common theory, but this book does a good job. The commentary about 3rd world countries being denied a reasonable path to technological skill is a crucial point.
  • Become an environmental humanist.

    5
    By truth-seeking
    Let’s stop blocking the developing world’s access to cheap, reliable electricity just because the source is fossil fuel. Let’s start installing more reliable nuclear power today while we work on unreliable, non-functional, expensive wind and solar technology.
  • Interesting to say the least

    5
    By Basil8600
    Really enjoyed this read, definitely makes you think about some of the hand wringing you see on the news
  • Excellent and Balanced

    5
    By Gundogger41
    Does a good job of telling both sides of an archetypal story regarding the balance between nature and culture.
  • Required reading

    5
    By brownbriefcase
    I actually listed to the audio version first, but had to come buy the digital version for further reference and review. This book opened my eyes. Incredible read. It should be required reading.
  • A combination of all that matters

    5
    By VandalSL
    This book is the first that I’ve found which examines the science and economics of solutions to our environmental challenges. If the reader is willing to question what they know and what they believe then this will help because it looks towards ways to create a brighter future for all humans and animals.

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